Cursum perficio

[Deleted User - 94472]

Actually, col, I wouldn't beat your head over this. Back in the Force days, I had well over 50 incidents of ATEN breaking their agreements with me over a 4 month or so period. Almost all of them could be traced to poor communication among factions and low level aristrocrats doing whatever they wanted. Honestly, I think that Rap and Scarus were both fed up with getting letters from me.

 

[Colossus_of_VA]

Actually, col, I wouldn't beat your head over this. Back in the Force days, I had well over 50 incidents of ATEN breaking their agreements with me over a 4 month or so period. Almost all of them could be traced to poor communication among factions and low level aristrocrats doing whatever they wanted. Honestly, I think that Rap and Scarus were both fed up with getting letters from me.

It wasnt always that way.... Taxed was honest and delt in good faith

 

[Deleted User - 94472]

I don't ever believe that Rap and Scarus dealt in bad faith. Rather, I suspect that by the time that they were in charge, ATEN became so large that it could no longer keep control. Also, I suspect that there were a few that were acting on their own agendas and simply ignoring their council's instructions. This breakdown was ATEN's major strategic weakness.

I remember a conversation with Solfar just as he was starting to run HOT. We were discussing who was hypothetically the biggest threat on W2 (at that time). He tried to convince it was ATEN, however I wouldn't agree with him for this specific reason.

 

[Colossus_of_VA]

I think Aten's problem was their peculiar leadership, much like any group of people that don't want to relinquish power to anyone, they had a leader with no power at all but to repeat what the "council" told him to repeat, the end result was that their "global leader" could neither make decisions nor deal with other global leaders on the same level, since their council rarely ever communicated with other global leaders, Aten ended up being politically isolated.

To any Aten members reading this - This is an opinion from an outside perspective but since I had frequent dealings with them there might be some accuracy in it.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think Aten's problem was their peculiar leadership, much like any group of people that don't want to relinquish power to anyone, they had a leader with no power at all but to repeat what the "council" told him to repeat, the end result was that their "global leader" could neither make decisions nor deal with other global leaders on the same level, since their council rarely ever communicated with other global leaders, Aten ended up being politically isolated.

To any Aten members reading this - This is an opinion from an outside perspective but since I had frequent dealings with them there might be some accuracy in it.

Kind of like government then?

 

[Deleted User - 94472]

I think Aten's problem was their peculiar leadership, much like any group of people that don't want to relinquish power to anyone, they had a leader with no power at all but to repeat what the "council" told him to repeat, the end result was that their "global leader" could neither make decisions nor deal with other global leaders on the same level, since their council rarely ever communicated with other global leaders, Aten ended up being politically isolated.

Where I would have to disagree is that I did have contact with a fair number of their global leaders (including rightie, scarus, hiraku and few others (not mikeys, bad_monkey or idefix, however)) and they were generally unequivocal on their agreements. That's why I tend to think the problems were lower lever. From what I understood, their overall leadership devolved into a number of lower level committees, each empowered to make their own decisions. However, I don't think these groups ever communicated with each other.

As you may have noticed much of my diplomatic strategy involved in dealing with lower level contacts and avoiding the higher level leadership unless necessary. It was more a matter of personal style and my own understanding of Force's place in W2.

To any Aten members reading this - This is an opinion from an outside perspective but since I had frequent dealings with them there might be some accuracy in it.

This equally applies to myself.

 

[Colossus_of_VA]

Ill give you an example of how Aten "castrates" its global leader (at least in the past) and how it causes Aten problems.

Back in the days when FTR was still a major force on W2, Aten was waging war on Rum47 (Rum47 was doing a great job of holding out) while almost everyone else was fighting Xig. Rum47 finally got tired of the constant attacks and worked out a deal to become an Aten branch, once Aten's leadership agreed to this they began to move longstanding Aten members into the newly formed AtenS to take control, this obviously pissed some people off in the new Aten branch... they left to join FTR.

After a week or so of Aten bickering with Gareeth (FTR's leader) Taxed (Atens global leader) came to me and asked that I broker a deal between Aten and FTR, seems he felt they where on the brink of war with FTR and figured (correctly) that HOT and TW would follow FTR, after talking with both Gareeth and Taxed it was evident that the problem centered around two players that Aten felt had orchestrated the defection of old Rum47 members to FTR, the two players(SlimR and Bubu) where also friends of mine so I offered to take them into HOT so Aten wouldn't feel that FTR was gaining anything and FTR wouldn't feel that those players where being sacrificed to Aten.

Both sides where agreeable with this as a solution and those players where moved.... end result was that war was averted but many sub leaders in Aten blamed Taxed for a bad deal and fired him.

 

[DeletedUser]

Ill give you an example of how Aten "castrates" its global leader (at least in the past) and how it causes Aten problems.

Back in the days when FTR was still a major force on W2, Aten was waging war on Rum47 (Rum47 was doing a great job of holding out) while almost everyone else was fighting Xig. Rum47 finally got tired of the constant attacks and worked out a deal to become an Aten branch, once Aten's leadership agreed to this they began to move longstanding Aten members into the newly formed AtenS to take control, this obviously pissed some people off in the new Aten branch... they left to join FTR.

After a week or so of Aten bickering with Gareeth (FTR's leader) Taxed (Atens global leader) came to me and asked that I broker a deal between Aten and FTR, seems he felt they where on the brink of war with FTR and figured (correctly) that HOT and TW would follow FTR, after talking with both Gareeth and Taxed it was evident that the problem centered around two players that Aten felt had orchestrated the defection of old Rum47 members to FTR, the two players(SlimR and Bubu) where also friends of mine so I offered to take them into HOT so Aten wouldn't feel that FTR was gaining anything and FTR wouldn't feel that those players where being sacrificed to Aten.

Both sides where agreeable with this as a solution and those players where moved.... end result was that war was averted but many sub leaders in Aten blamed Taxed for a bad deal and fired him.

Ah so that is why they moved to HOT instead of staying with the rest of the Rum47 family.

 

[Colossus_of_VA]

Ah so that is why they moved to HOT instead of staying with the rest of the Rum47 family.

So many deals and agreements go on behind the scenes in this game... most are perfectly innocent and even beneficial to all parties involved but so few people want to listen with an open mind.

 

[DeletedUser]

So many deals and agreements go on behind the scenes in this game... most are perfectly innocent and even beneficial to all parties involved but so few people want to listen with an open mind.

The small deals and all the little facts is what always interested me the most, yeah fighting is fun when you have the time to spend on it, but the real fun has always been sitting and listening to all the different deals being bargained and the agreements being made, and it is sad when people don't sit back and wait their turn than move forward with an open mind.

Man if these stubborn people were a little more open minded you could easily win this game with out ever building a single troop, than again having force behind your words even when spoken nicely is more meaningful than those without a equal force.:icon_razz:

 

[Deleted User - 94472]

Interesting point Collosus. Perhaps you can enlighten on one aspect of that mess. At that time, RB and Force were poised to attack FOS (yes...they had decided to betray an old ally, mostly because they were very unreliable).

Beldin (ok...not the world's greatest diplomat) appeared to have some deal worked out with ATEN to join the attack. I say some deal because ATEN|D was supposed to be kept out of it. I was also told that C was involved, but my contacts there knew nothing about it.

Anyway, we had our attack plans drawn up, ops planned and we were 48 hours from launch. Then, mysteriously, FOS disbanded and most joined ATEN|S. I know that part of it was due to Darko and Eranm quitting...however they were trudging on. The timing however was very convenient. For myself, it was always one of the mysteries of W2. Perhaps you may know a detail or 2 here.

On the other hand, more to my point. I had one incident where we caught a baron red handed erase all the force related diplomacy and use that for a pretext for an attack. On another, duirng the RB/Hot war pt II, we caught an ATEN Duke red handed trying to spy for HOT. This was despite their policy of neutrality.

 

[Deleted User - 94472]

The small deals and all the little facts is what always interested me the most, yeah fighting is fun when you have the time to spend on it, but the real fun has always been sitting and listening to all the different deals being bargained and the agreements being made, and it is sad when people don't sit back and wait their turn than move forward with an open mind.

Man if these stubborn people were a little more open minded you could easily win this game with out ever building a single troop, than again having force behind your words even when spoken nicely is more meaningful than those without a equal force.:icon_razz:

What we're talking about here is fairly safe as it's about a year or 2 old. However, it was part of the fun. One of the most active threads in Force was our detailing of our own history. There were very few details that I did not relate (after a suitable period of time).

On the other side, these little details are often what determines how wars are faught. You could say that wars are won or lost many times before the first troops are launched.

 

[DeletedUser]

What we're talking about here is fairly safe as it's about a year or 2 old. However, it was part of the fun. One of the most active threads in Force was our detailing of our own history. There were very few details that I did not relate (after a suitable period of time).

On the other side, these little details are often what determines how wars are faught. You could say that wars are won or lost many times before the first troops are launched.

Before you moved on did you save the thread somewhere or did you let it die, perhaps you saved it on your personal computer, would be very interesting to read now that force is no more some of the facts may prove very interesting.

 

[Deleted User - 94472]

Unfortunately, my understanding was that force was dissolved when they merged into HOT. So, the original postings would be lost to all but the admins (I am assuming that they may still exist in the TW database).

A lot of the details there were about why certain fights were fought and the diplomatic shenanigans around them. Although there were notes about how our Xig alliance during the first Xig/FTR war really came about (it was a complete accident). Also, how I wiggled out of a direct confrontation with TW after we attacked Steveeo with Xig and Cold.

What really happened with our RB alliance (very long story) and other rather "fun" details (like what I really did to Cuda1337 after a counter-attack on CE).

Being on the sidelines meant that I was never a central character in a lot of the W2 plots, but I did have some very interesting (read humorous) perspectives.

The really funny thing about Force was how loyal the players were. I doubt we ever had a spy internally (the only spies seemed to come from the RB side). Also, they were fanatical about not merging with any tribe, regardless of the consequences. Quite a few times, someone would post something on our internal forum. I would just smile while waiting for the inevitible flames.

 

[Colossus_of_VA]

Anyway, we had our attack plans drawn up, ops planned and we were 48 hours from launch. Then, mysteriously, FOS disbanded and most joined ATEN|S. I know that part of it was due to Darko and Eranm quitting...however they were trudging on. The timing however was very convenient. For myself, it was always one of the mysteries of W2. Perhaps you may know a detail or 2 here.

Unfortunately I know little of this incident, I know that I considered Beldon a "loose canon" at best and therefore intentionally had little to do with him, I do recall being told that Aten was looking for new hunting grounds in the SE since taking Rum47 in gave them a launch point in the east.

You would have to remember that at the time HOT was in a odd situation, while we had just had some very successful gains in the war with Xig, we had also taken some painful loses in the south, we came out of that war with two goals... reassert our form of governance over a tribe that nearly doubled in size in the Xig war and rest/rebuild our forces, we had pretty much closed our doors to mergers and mass recruitment and as a result we paid less attention to what we considered "second tier" tribes like RB and more attention our own need to rebuild our infra structure and to our long standing allies like FTR and TW.

 

[DeletedUser]

Unfortunately, my understanding was that force was dissolved when they merged into HOT. So, the original postings would be lost to all but the admins (I am assuming that they may still exist in the TW database).

A lot of the details there were about why certain fights were fought and the diplomatic shenanigans around them. Although there were notes about how our Xig alliance during the first Xig/FTR war really came about (it was a complete accident). Also, how I wiggled out of a direct confrontation with TW after we attacked Steveeo with Xig and Cold.

What really happened with our RB alliance (very long story) and other rather "fun" details (like what I really did to Cuda1337 after a counter-attack on CE).

Being on the sidelines meant that I was never a central character in a lot of the W2 plots, but I did have some very interesting (read humorous) perspectives.

The really funny thing about Force was how loyal the players were. I doubt we ever had a spy internally (the only spies seemed to come from the RB side). Also, they were fanatical about not merging with any tribe, regardless of the consequences. Quite a few times, someone would post something on our internal forum. I would just smile while waiting for the inevitible flames.

im afraid that the main Force tribe was deleted 3 months before we merged then ForceS which was Force by then delete hit when we mereged

ForceE just recently went delete and ForceO or ForceW if i remeber forrectly is till around

yep the only spy ever found from when i joined the confederation was an RB spy who we caught after RB5 became ForceS

i personally know that couple were inivited to TW(only people above 1 mil points) but they stayed loyal

Just so you all know the decieding factor of the merge was that TW dropped our NAP with them a week before an OP on ladyrain which had been planned for 3 months that was cancelled and while Force(main) was gainaing slowly ForceO ForceE ect were losing to badly so we had 2 options

Merge into HOT
Merge into Aten

We eventually merged Force into HOT except for the few of us that went to SLB and that numbered 6-8 not sure comepletely but now half have deleted
1 also went to MPX that i know of

 

[Colossus_of_VA]

I think that its unfortunate that so many opinions are formed on misinformation or assumptions, so much of what was done or decided on is condemned by others simply because they don't know the whole story or cant see any thing from a perspective other than their own.

The the only thing worse than forming an opinion based on non facts is when someone chooses to ignore the real facts once they are presented with them because they have become so entrenched in their original opinion that they cant see a way out.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think that its unfortunate that so many opinions are formed on misinformation or assumptions, so much of what was done or decided on is condemned by others simply because they don't know the whole story or cant see any thing from a perspective other than their own.

The the only thing worse than forming an opinion based on non facts is when someone chooses to ignore the real facts once they are presented with them because they have become so entrenched in their original opinion that they cant see a way out.

I have seen this happen, the person in the entrenched was also trying to prove something with very horrible evidence that did not even prove a thing that they seemed to think it proved, but what can you say 'you just can't fix stupid' as the saying goes.

 

[Colossus_of_VA]

As I sit here thinking over the direction this thread has taken, it occurs to me that maybe its time for a lot of "mysteries" to come out in the light of day.

 

[TheHans]

Col, successful gains? I remember Bolaar ripping HOT SW. Do you mean when XiG.2 joined your forces?